


Now And Then I Get Insecure

by carnivalinsidemyhead



Series: We Are Beautiful [1]
Category: Take That
Genre: Body Image Insecurity, Character sketches, Self Esteem Issues, mentions of disordered eating habits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:28:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27765250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carnivalinsidemyhead/pseuds/carnivalinsidemyhead
Summary: Sketches mainly focused on body image insecurity and set in roughly the present day.
Series: We Are Beautiful [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2034649
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	1. The Body

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first part of what I have planned to be a five part series (or four parts and an epilogue) of short sketches dealing with the emotional frailties of the boys and the pressures of fame. I’m currently working on the second part.

It felt like a lifetime ago that he was The Body. And yet at the same time it felt like he would never stop being The Body.

And it were fucking ridiculous, weren’t it?

Here he was, over 50, and still worried that he wouldn’t be loved anymore if he let his body look its age. 

Still worried after all these years that was all he had to offer the world.

He knew it wasn’t. He did. He swore he did. 

It’s just.

Those words from all those years ago. All those words telling him this was what he was here for. Just keep your head down and keep your mouth shut and get your kit off and make the birds scream. I know what I’m doing, lad, I’ll make us a fortune.

The words that never quite go away completely.

The words that have lived in the back of his head for the past thirty years and won’t leave no matter how much things have changed since those days.

He sighs as he looks at the circles under his eyes and the gray in his hair. At least he still has hair, he thinks. Could be worse.

Then he downs his daily shot of celery juice and strips off and looks himself over again. 

He doesn’t look half bad for an old fart, he thinks. Swimming is pretty good exercise. Could be better though. 

Maybe he should focus on a more intense workout regimen instead of trying to write songs on his own.

He’s gotten pretty far being The Body. What did trying to write music on his own get him besides one unreleased record that makes him cringe whenever some fan unearths it on YouTube?

Best to wait for Mark and Gary to start writing. He’ll just make a muddle of things.

It’s not so bad being The Body, he tells himself. Really, anyone else would be grateful to be in his shoes.

So what the fuck is he stood there bollock naked and crying in front of a mirror for?

“You stupid twat,” he tells his reflection. “You poor stupid bastard.”


	2. Blobby Robbie

Blobby Robbie.

He always hated that one.

He hasn’t been Blobby Robbie for a few years now. Thank fuck.

Though what bloody difference would it make if he were?

He’d still have his eighteen Brits, gorgeous wife and kids, and more money than God.

What sort of pathetic twat cared what some loser writing for a tabloid said?

The sort of pathetic twat who’s needed everyone to love him since he was the cheeky fucker at the back.

Since he was told time and time again that he wasn’t good enough to be anything but the cheeky fucker at the back.

And he’s been in the business long enough to know you’ve got to look good if you want to be loved.

No one likes a fat popstar, do they? Look at what happened with Gaz.

He winces at that. At himself. It’s all come out right in the end, but he won’t ever stop hating himself for it. Not completely. 

Gaz forgave him ages ago but he’s yet to completely forgive himself.

He’s such a twat sometimes. Such a stupid, stupid twat.

He looks at his snack tray of carrots and hummus with resignation and listlessly dips a carrot stick into the tub of hummus while longingly eyeing the bags of crisps in the pantry.

He’s tempted to chuck the carrots over for the crisps, but then he looks down at his belly and remembers he still hasn’t gotten rid of the extra pounds he put on over the holidays.

“Blobby Robbie.” He hisses at himself in a voice filled with scorn.


	3. Fat For Good

Really, he thinks, the stupid headlines back in the day weren’t the issue. He had thought they were. He had thought that once he got to the point where he wasn’t recognizable and they left him alone, things would be better.

Things hadn’t been better.

Being left alone had been far, far worse.

It got to the point where he had almost been glad whenever Rob took a pot shot at him in a song, as much as it hurt.

At least Rob had still known he was alive.

He had tried to disappear. Had tried to eat the popstar. 

But then he’d stepped back on that stage, back with the band, back in front of all those thousands of fans cheering, and that was it. He couldn’t go back to obscurity again.

He knows he’s not going to end up with a tanked career again if he puts on a few pounds. 

He swears he does. 

Knows he’s not going to be back to twenty years before, back to binging and purging and getting out of breath getting out of bed and not taking care of himself because what’s the point when he’s nothing but a failure if he ever happens to slip up in his diet and exercise regimen.

Knows that all the success of the past fifteen years won’t just slip through his fingers if he does.

He knows all this. 

But he can’t...he just can’t quite believe it.

So he does another set of weights and takes yet another selfie to post on Instagram and tries not to think about how reliant he’s gotten on getting validation from those selfies.

You can’t blame him, he thinks. Can’t blame him for enjoying it. It’s not like he had it before. 

Not like he was ever The Body.

He’d always wanted to be The Body. And the taste of it he’s getting now is brilliant. Just brilliant. 

He’s on top of the world. And he’ll stay there as long as he stays in shape.

As long as he doesn’t get fat again nothing can hurt him. He just can’t get fat again.

He just can’t.


	4. Britain’s Most Fanciable Male

Those awards were so daft, he thinks. Especially since, to his mind anyway, he wasn’t even the most fanciable male in the band, let alone all Britain.

He’s never quite understood what anyone sees in him, if he’s honest. But that never stopped him from using being little and cute to his advantage when it suited his purposes.

“Sweet Lil Markie” got a lot of action that way. For far longer than he should have.

He can’t quite put his finger on when it changed. Obviously he’d stopped pulling the birds behind Emma’s back when he’d been caught red handed but if he hadn’t had his hand forced, he probably could have carried on charming his way into beds indiscriminately for a good number more years.

He wouldn’t have, of course. He had no desire to go back down that path. But he could have. He was still impossibly cute and impossibly young looking.

He felt a bit like Dorian Gray during those days. The never aging nicest man in history hiding all his dark, sordid secrets behind a killer smile. He’s pretty sure he heard at least one person make a crack about him having a secret portrait in his attic.

And then suddenly, overnight almost, he was old. Tired. Haggered. Drunk looking. Unrecognizable. To name a few comments given on his appearance.

It shouldn’t bother him so much that he’s not turning heads anymore. That he finally looks his age. 

He’s always maintained that looks don’t matter. And he’s been trying to break past being The Cute One for how long now? 

It shouldn’t bother him. Things like that don’t bother him. Nothing bothers him. He fucking invented the Tao of Owen, alright?

But he still looks at himself in the mirror and smiles with grim satisfaction. He’s gonna knock them dead on this tour and make them all eat their words.

He’s hit by a flash of guilt then and the worrying conviction that he’s being awful and he sighs at himself.

“Some things never change, do they?”


	5. The Other One

“The other one.” That’s what Jason was. “The one that’s not Howard.” Or, frequently, “Howard.”

Sometimes he was “the dancer” or “the one who couldn’t sing.”

He’d been put in the band for his body. For the way it looked and the way he could move it. He had no illusions about that.

But his body doesn’t look like it used to. No matter how hard he tries, he can’t put on weight. Can’t get back that muscled physique of twenty years ago. He was gaunt these days with stress and lack of sleep.

And his body can’t do what it used to. Or at least probably not much longer. He could hardly expect it to be able to breakdance in its fifties.

It was a fucking miracle he could do it at forty. Did he really want to push it further?

He’s tired. He is just really, really, bone deep, soul deep exhausted.

From pushing himself to dance like it was still the nineties. Because he still doesn’t think he can properly contribute otherwise. 

From making the effort to contribute more to the songwriting even though he will probably never stop feeling out of his depth or like he understands music like the others do.

From having no privacy from the paparazzi. He doesn’t understand why a middle aged pop star is still so fascinating to them, especially since they don’t even remember which one he is half the time, but he can’t even go pick up his dry cleaning without being stalked for fuck’s sake.

He’s just so very tired. 

He can’t be Jason from Take That anymore.


End file.
